“Now,” she growled out when I didn’t immediately move towards her.
“Is… is everything… okay?” I asked weakly; it was becoming more and more difficult to find my voice with each step closer to the towering alpha.
I stopped in front of her desk, and she growled frustratedly and walked in long, quick strides around the desk and across the room. I turned to follow her, and my stomach sank as she closed and locked her office door.
She stalked back towards me, and I stepped backward, my backside nudging her desk.
Cole stopped directly in front of me. She towered over me as she looked me up and down.
“Are you hurt?” she asked me.
“No,” I answered, but I sounded unsure even to myself.
Cole gripped my apron.
“Take this off,” she commanded.
“Why?” I questioned even as my hands moved to unclip the apron and pull it over my head and free from my body.
Cole took it from me and threw it to the side.
She stepped closer still and grabbed me by my elbows, and pulled me forward. Her hold was firm, and the suddenness of it, my anxiety, and the scent of Cole’s anger, combined, resulted, to my complete mortification, in my going nearly limp in Cole’s hold like a pup.
I didn’t stop her, didn’t even protest as her hands moved the hem of the top I wore and she lifted it, removing it from my body; the cold air of the office hit my chest and hitched my breath.
Cole’s eyes diligently scanned my torso. Her hands landed softly on my hips, and she turned me around wordlessly. I braced my hands against the desk as her fingers almost caressed my spine, gently pressing against me, creating a shiver. Her hand stopped at the base of my neck, and I breathed in sharply at the vulnerability, the danger, the intimacy of it. My neck in her hand. She released my neck and pushed her fingers through my hair.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Why was I allowing her to do… this? I dug my nails into the desk.
Her hand moved back to my neck as her other hand gripped my hip. She moved from my shoulder down my ribs, and I swallowed the sound that tried to make it past my lips.
Lower still, she went until her hand dipped around to the button of my trousers, which was when my mind, somewhere hazily, registered what was happening; but Cole was so close, so firm, steady—it was like the warmth of the sun. I was bathing in her.
She undid the first button—it was like a downpour of rain—and I gasped, and the office and my predicament came crashing back into clarity.
“Wait,” I said.
I was ignored. Cole’s fingers made quick work of the remaining buttons, and she pushed my trousers roughly down my thighs before I could make any further protest.
Ashamedly, I tried to cover my scars. They marred the skin of my right thigh and buttocks in silvery-white, thick streaks, and dents from where teeth and claws had cut to the bone. I didn’t want her to see.
Cole moved my hands away with too much ease. I tried to fight back then, my senses coming back to me, and I slapped at her hands.
She growled loud enough to shake the windows, the sound ferocious, predatory, all alpha, and took hold of both my wrists and spun me around to face her. Brown and golden eyes pierced me. She bared her teeth, and I was again, still, passive.
Her hands glided, soft, hardly a touch, mapping out each scar, each dip.
I was exposed, vulnerable; I couldn’t stop what was happening, and the delicate way Cole handled me, as if I might break, made it all worse.
Eventually, she moved on, inspecting my legs further, even going so far as to manoeuvre my ankles. I realised she was looking for signs of injury before she lifted my trousers back up and over my hips.
Her hands landed on either side of me against her desk. I pressed myself back, but there was nowhere to go. She was everywhere.
“Sara told me what happened,” she said, so close to me that we were sharing breath, and she dipped her head to my neck and inhaled. “I needed,” she said the word like it was some curse, something she couldn’t control, “to check you weren’t injured.”
“I told you I wasn’t,” I told her.
She pressed her nose against my neck, and a shiver rattled my spine.
